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Etobicoke-Lakeshore: Holyday, Milczyn election rematch

Less than a year after winning Etobicoke-Lakeshore in a byelection, Doug Holyday is back in a rematch Councillor Peter Milczyn.

Doug Holyday prepares to leave his campaign literature at a house in the Alderwood neighbourhood of the Etobicoke-Lakeshore riding. Holyday, a Progressive Conservative who won the riding in a byelection last year, hopes to be returned to Queen's Park. (David Rider / Toronto Star) | Order this photo

Peter Milczyn, the Toronto city councillor running for the provincial Liberals in Etobicoke-Lakeshore, talks to homeowner Yong Nam "Ben" Hur. Milczyn is running against Progressive Conservative Doug Holyday, who won the riding last year in a byelection. (David Rider / Toronto Star) | Order this photo

Roaming leafy Alderwood, the popular politician, who is still a scrappy hockey player in his 70s, is greeted warmly at several doors. Others harbour colder shoulders.

Amber Burkinshaw tells him she is already worried about the size of the class her 4-year-old will join this fall. Holyday’s Progressive Conservatives want to make classes bigger.

Class sizes “are only slightly increasing,” Holyday tells her forcefully, “and (increases) are recommended by the Drummond report, which told the Liberals to do it because they haven’t got the money to do what they’re doing.”

That does not seem to win a vote from Burkinshaw, a thirty-something lawyer.

Holyday’s helpers included “Ford Nation” supporters rallied by Mayor . Holyday and Ford celebrated at Queen’s Park after Holyday took 16,034 votes to Milczyn’s 14,506 — the first PC win in Toronto since 1999.

For the rematch, the front-runners are relying primarily on their own volunteers. Popular wisdom says byelections are driven by local issues and the candidates, while provincial issues matter more in a general election.

“In the byelection some people felt they could express some dissatisfaction with something or other the government did, and it didn’t really matter,” argues Milczyn, 49, who remains the Ward 5 councillor.

“Now they realize what’s at stake — strong transit, education, health care, a realistic plan on economy supporting business and young people who want to be entrepreneurs.”

The riding includes village-like Mimico and Long Branch, plus condo-based Humber Bay Shores, in the south; commercial-industrial properties mixed with homes in the middle, and a postwar suburb to the north.

Milczyn says the main issues are jobs, transit, seniors’ issues and education, the latter particularly important to an influx of young families.

At doorsteps, he is pitching Liberal Leader Kathleen Wynne’s left-leaning platform of a $2.5-billion jobs and prosperity fund, GO Transit improvements, plus his commitment to fight for a new Park Lawn station and continued investments in education.

Holyday, meanwhile, is not diluting PC Leader Tim Hudak’s tough-medicine “million jobs” platform. However, he addresses concerns over the vow to eliminate 100,000 government jobs by noting Toronto and the old Etobicoke municipality shed jobs “without throwing anybody to the curb.”

He touts Hudak’s subway-based transit plan, including a downtown relief line, and says in an interview Torontonians wouldn’t balk at the province seizing control of Toronto transit from the TTC and city council.

“Whoever pays the piper is going to have most of the say, and I think that’s where the provincial government is going to step up and show the funds and leadership to get this done,” he says.

Back on the hunt for votes, he gets an enthusiastic thumbs-up from retired TTC worker Nancy Butler, 60 — “We trust him, he’s honest” — while another homeowner likes Holyday, but says he can’t stomach Hudak.

When a man asks Holyday if he is “anti gun or pro gun”, Holyday turns and heads next door. Enraged, the hunter and gun owner follows, yelling: “You turned your back on me.”

“What’s this gun or no gun got to do with the provincial government?” Holyday shoots back, telling him in so many words what he can do with his vote. The man dramatically rips up Holyday’s campaign literature.

Things are calmer in Milczyn’s cavernous, sparsely populated campaign office. “Pretty well,” he says when asked how the race is going.

Later, canvassing Nipissing Dr., in the Bloor St. W.-Highway 427 area, undecided voter Nadya Holowatch listens to Milczyn’s low-key pitch. She wants to hear the leaders’ debate that night before making up her mind.

Later in the week, when contacted by the Star, Holowatch says: “I decided to vote Liberal. I like what they stand for more than what Hudak stands for.”

Other Etobicoke-Lakeshore candidates include former school trustee P.C. Choo, running for the NDP and Green Party candidate Angela Salewsky.

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